A people fight for their freedom, create a nation, and try to build it into a secular, liberal society. While all this is happening, one group stays out of it and calls for an end to the freedom movement. Then years pass and the nation gains a good reputation the world over...

...as a democratic nation. The people from this nation, when they go out, are treated with respect in other secular democracies. This reputation also aids those who had been opposed to the freedom struggle and to a secular Constitution because they too, after all, are citizens...

...of this nation. Eventually, a time comes when this group rides the nation's reputation to power and gets to be in a position to govern the nation. It begins to subvert the democratic ideals of the nation. It deepens divides through communal narratives and causes people to...

...turn against each other so they will never be united against them. It even makes laws that discriminate on the basis of religion and laws that deprive people of basic rights. It clamps down on protesters, imprisons journalists and activists, and weakens the legal system.

And while it does all this, it maintains the facade of democracy. With words alone, it keeps paying homage to the free press, it keeps paying tributes to "individual freedoms", it keeps saying it respects what the nation was built to be. Why? Because it needs to ride the image...

...that the nation has internationally. The group knows that if it was stripped of the dignity the nation offers it, it would be plainly visible as a toxic, cowardly band of thugs. So it feeds on the nation's reputation. Some might call this behaviour parasitic. The Hindi word...

...for which is परजीवी. Parasites live off other organisms. And in the process, they damage and eventually destroy the host organism. In this case, a communal, fascist parasite is feeding off a secular liberal host, living off its reputation and killing it slowly.